TOKYO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Rakuten, Inc., a leading global innovation company in e-commerce,
communications and fintech, and soon to be the operator of Japan’s
newest and most innovative mobile network, today announced a strategic
investment in US-based mobile technology company, Altiostar Networks,
Inc., to be completed subject to approval by the Committee on Foreign
Investment in the United States.

Altiostar will utilize this new round of financing to expand its virtual
Radio Access Network solutions for 4G and 5G to accelerate the industry
paradigm shift to web-scale cloud-native mobile networks.

Rakuten is currently on track to achieve an industry first with the
deployment of a fully virtualized mobile network in Japan in October
2019, including radio access, and the investment in Altiostar
demonstrates Rakuten’s commitment to taking a leadership role in driving
RAN virtualization. To build its 5G-ready mobile network infrastructure,
Rakuten is nurturing an open ecosystem by actively participating in
crafting solutions through engagement with industry leaders like Intel
and Qualcomm, as well as ODMs and innovative Virtual RAN disruptors like
Altiostar.

“Our vision for Rakuten Mobile Network is to build the world’s first
end-to-end, fully virtualized, software-defined mobile network: A
network that innovates at the Speed-of-Software and scales at the
Speed-of-Cloud. Altiostar technology is key to realizing this vision
within the year,” said Tareq Amin, CTO of Rakuten Mobile Network. “The
whole Rakuten team is looking forward to working closely with Altiostar
to take a leadership role in driving RAN virtualization and to bring
disruptive innovation to the mobile industry.”

“Open RAN architecture and virtualization are key to building
software-centric networks that can scale and adapt to meet an explosion
of devices and applications driving service velocity and profits,” said
Ashraf Dahod, CEO of Altiostar Networks. “This funding is going to help
us expand our technology innovation to help operators like Rakuten to
push new business models and bring affordable broadband to the masses
through web-scale mobile networks.”

In addition to the investment, Rakuten Mobile Network President
Yoshihisa Yamada and Chief Technology Officer Tareq Amin will join the
board of Altiostar upon completion of the transaction.

About Rakuten

Rakuten, Inc. (TOKYO: 4755) is a global leader in internet services that
empower individuals, communities, businesses and society. Founded in
Tokyo in 1997 as an online marketplace, Rakuten has expanded to offer
services in e-commerce, fintech, digital content and communications to
more than 1.2 billion members around the world. The Rakuten Group has
over 17,000 employees, and operations in 30 countries and regions. For
more information visit https://global.rakuten.com/corp/.

About Altiostar

Altiostar provides a 5G-ready virtualized RAN software solution that
supports open interfaces and disaggregates the hardware from the
software to build an open multi-vendor web-scale network. This solution
supports macro and small cells, indoor and outdoor, enabling
interference management, carrier aggregation and dual reception to
improve the efficiency of the network and enhances the Quality of
Experience for the user while providing broadband speeds. Operators can
add intelligence, quickly adapt the software for different services and
automate operations to rapidly scale the network.For more
information visit http://www.altiostar.com
or follow on Twitter @altiostar.